living life simply happy

November 24, 2017

WHY I AM GOING ZERO WASTE

Hello and welcome back to my blog fairy-land you wonderful reader ❤

Originally I intended to call this blog post „The Zero Waste Challenge“.
But the word challenge itself has this finite connotation for me.
30 Day Challenge. 21 Day Challenge. 7 Day Challenge.
It all ends eventually.

Zero Waste is a topic that is very dear to my heart.
Our planet is our home.
The cities that we have built around us may conceal the beauty and the nature.
But it also conceals the mountains, cities of undestroyable trash that we produce daily.
Our earth has to swallow our dirt, our ignorance, our lack of time, lack of concerns.

Fortunately our planet is alive, its a very smart eco system that gives us air, water, sunlight, life.
But sadly, Mother Earth being just as alive as us implicates that she has her limits.
She needs us to take care of her just as much as she takes care of us.

We should put nurture in the places of damage.
Put love in the place of suffering.
Time in the place of ignorance.
Faith in the place of despair.
Light in the place of darkness.

The reason why

I am not going to present you with facts about how much we damage our own environment, our waters, animals, earth. I am not going to convince you of how much this issues concern you as an individual. I am convinced that we all carry a certain sense of responsibility inside. I just encourage you to dwell in this feeling of collective responsibility and to see what it does to you.

___

I dwelled in this feeling for the last couple of months, maybe even half a year.
And one of the major outcomes was the realization that NOT reducing my waste would be completely out of alignment with my core values. Meaning: I am currently living my life out of alignment with my values. At least in one area of my life.

This. This is the reason why I am going Zero Waste. This is the reason why I will join the movement. I don’t want to jump head in first. I want to analyze my daily life and slowly incorporate change in different areas. That’s why I am not doing a challenge. I don’t want to dive in fully and be overwhelmed and quit. This is too important.

Things I will tackle first:

– analyze how much trash i produce daily
– what kind of waste do i produce?
– be shocked of my ignorance ( I already had some of it)
– see which areas of my life are producing waste
– think of the big picture: how should each area of my life look like ideally?

What I am already doing:

– carrying my own cutlery
– using a steel straw
– not buying bottled water (using my reusable bottle)
– not using paper in school anymore
– not buying as many hard copies of books and listening more to audiobooks
– switched to natural, vegan and cruelty free beauty products which are mostly packaged in glass and that I can recycle in the store
– re/using what I already have

After I have done the first steps I am going to incorporate big changes and keep you updated.
Tell me, do you have Zero Waste experience?
What was the toughest part for you?
Or are you interested in the movement but don’t have the resources to join?

Let me know in the comments if you think that I am being overly dramatic and that its all just a trend? 😉

4 thoughts on “WHY I AM GOING ZERO WASTE”

I really enjoyed reading this post, I don’t think that you are being overly dramatic, the situation is dramatic . The zero waste movement also interests me very much but sometimes I find it hard to reduce my waste, for example reminding myself to bring my own caffe cup from home instead of buying coffe to go all the time, or finding (not too expensive) alternatives to buying vegetables at the supermarket which are almost ALWAYS wrapped in plastic.
Thank you for the inspiration ❤

Hi dear 💜 thank you for that beautiful comment. You made my day.
Most coffee shops give you a discount if you bring your own cup or tumbler, did you know that?
And you’re absolutely right, the vegetables are often wrapped in plastic. But do you have Oriental stores close by, they usually offer cheaper and unpackaged vegetables.

Great post! I am currently doing the same things you are to reduce my waste. Your post has reminded me that I still have a ways to go. I respect that you aren’t jumping in headfirst, because I only think that is a recipe for failure.

Best of luck to you in your journey. I’m thankful there are people out there who can set examples. ❤